Neuroscience has demonstrated that decisions are made before humans are fully conscious of them, so the requirements of Moral Theology can never be fully met, with respect to "free will". It's a proven illusion, and you are an intellectual fraud, Q.

As far as absolute moral values go, your stupid cult CHANGED the rules from the OT to the NT, so your own idiotic holy books refute your own childish claims. The Hebrews were told to kill their disobedient children. Did you kill your disobedient children, Q ?

Get real.

Insufferable know-it-all. It is objectively immoral to kill innocent babies. Please stick to the guilty babies.

(31-07-2015 01:05 PM)The Q Continuum Wrote: Please allow me to restate. You propose an infinite line in one direction, the past only. Today is today, tomorrow is the future. Today is the last day of all history. An infinite line would go in both directions, past and future. One can go back without bound but on the return trip, one finds a terminus here in July 2015 CE.

It is therefore not an infinite line

Wrong. Utterly, completely wrong. The negative integers form an infinite set - they terminate in one direction at -1 but the extent is infinite.

As I said, your understanding is a meaningless jumble of incorrect interpretations.

Quote:and therefore the past lines of time cannot be infinite as the timeline would need to expand to all possibility in BOTH directions to be truly infinite.

Nope, see above.

Quote:There are a finite number of days that STOP now at today (where we are both located, I hope!). Do not mistake an abstract infinite series with a concrete one. Our timeline is half-infinite at present, at best!

Please provide evidence that time does not extend infinitely into the past; you need evidence since your mathematical argument is incorrect.

Quote:Luckily for both of us "mathematicians" you haven't yet explained how the universe collapses and re-expands perpetually without losing power in the process--or where all this present matter and energy came from... I think God made it.

I don't need to explain that as I have made no claim about it.

I love it when Q tries to math. That half-infinite shit was fucking hilarious. What does infinity divided by 2 equal? Uhhhhh half-infinity? Comic genius. Reminds me of this...

(30-07-2015 10:19 AM)The Q Continuum Wrote: 1. Loneliness in trials—everyone has trials and tribulations, we can have them with God or on our own.

2. Hell

3. Those two alone alarm me!

I addressed 3 & 2 earlier; my remarks about point 1 are as follows:

Where is family in this? Close friends? All of us have a social circle; we're the most socially cooperative species on the planet (that doesn't devote the entirety of its existence to maintenance of a queen (with apologies to the UK)) - to grapple with the sour lemons and rotten apples and bad dudes and unpropitious weather events and cardio-vascular collapse and vile tasting coffee we garner support from PEOPLE, real people, who care about us and know us. To turn first to some flighty figment of imagination for the "most important" emotional support isn't just high folly, it's probably the ultimate folly of all the possible things to get wrong.

That scrap of imagination will not produce anything tangible, and before you go screaming "placebo effect" at me reflect on what that says: that belief in a good outcome is beneficial, NOT belief that the good outcome necessarily comes from a god bending the pillars of natural law on your behalf.

ANY belief that a supernatural agent will intercede or provide emotional succor will WEAKEN the emotional energy invested in the people and capabilities that provide REAL help, help that can be depended on, help that can be measured in real units of desired outcome. Belief that some god is necessary to cope with misfortune is indistinguishable from Linus and his blanket (and I think every time Snoopy clamped onto that blanket things did not go well for Linus).

In summary, then, loneliness is indeed unendurable, especially when stressed, but that's because we've evolved to be a socially cooperative species that NEEDS social contact, and there's NOTHING about a god that furnishes a molecule of that. All your church friends are supporting you because THEY care about YOU, not because the god you collectively believe in cares.

Finally, pinning emotional hope on a phantom will often result in a feeling of betrayal when, because REAL support was spurned or diluted in order to give "god a chance", a bad outcome occurs, and you'll grieve that your god apparently abandoned you. The person who suffers a bad outcome but didn't believe in a god to save him is sad, but the person who thought a god would save him is both sad AND feels worthless. Belief in a phantom only compounds misery, and that is why it is high folly to look to a god for any kind of support through difficulties when you've got REAL people to provide REAL support right there with you.

(30-07-2015 10:19 AM)The Q Continuum Wrote: 1. Loneliness in trials—everyone has trials and tribulations, we can have them with God or on our own.

2. Hell

3. Those two alone alarm me!

I addressed 3 & 2 earlier; my remarks about point 1 are as follows:

Where is family in this? Close friends? All of us have a social circle; we're the most socially cooperative species on the planet (that doesn't devote the entirety of its existence to maintenance of a queen (with apologies to the UK)) - to grapple with the sour lemons and rotten apples and bad dudes and unpropitious weather events and cardio-vascular collapse and vile tasting coffee we garner support from PEOPLE, real people, who care about us and know us. To turn first to some flighty figment of imagination for the "most important" emotional support isn't just high folly, it's probably the ultimate folly of all the possible things to get wrong.

That scrap of imagination will not produce anything tangible, and before you go screaming "placebo effect" at me reflect on what that says: that belief in a good outcome is beneficial, NOT belief that the good outcome necessarily comes from a god bending the pillars of natural law on your behalf.

ANY belief that a supernatural agent will intercede or provide emotional succor will WEAKEN the emotional energy invested in the people and capabilities that provide REAL help, help that can be depended on, help that can be measured in real units of desired outcome. Belief that some god is necessary to cope with misfortune is indistinguishable from Linus and his blanket (and I think every time Snoopy clamped onto that blanket things did not go well for Linus).

In summary, then, loneliness is indeed unendurable, especially when stressed, but that's because we've evolved to be a socially cooperative species that NEEDS social contact, and there's NOTHING about a god that furnishes a molecule of that. All your church friends are supporting you because THEY care about YOU, not because the god you collectively believe in cares.

Finally, pinning emotional hope on a phantom will often result in a feeling of betrayal when, because REAL support was spurned or diluted in order to give "god a chance", a bad outcome occurs, and you'll grieve that your god apparently abandoned you. The person who suffers a bad outcome but didn't believe in a god to save him is sad, but the person who thought a god would save him is both sad AND feels worthless. Belief in a phantom only compounds misery, and that is why it is high folly to look to a god for any kind of support through difficulties when you've got REAL people to provide REAL support right there with you.

Neuroscience has demonstrated that decisions are made before humans are fully conscious of them, so the requirements of Moral Theology can never be fully met, with respect to "free will". It's a proven illusion, and you are an intellectual fraud,

Citation please.

I think you are thinking of a particular, flawed experiment where they put people in MRI machines and ask them to make decisions.

The article doesn't note any protocol problems and this study in fact corrects a protocol problem with an earlier similar study.

Nonetheless, the time interval of prediction was huge: 7 to 10 seconds, and it raises the question of what goes on when the brain is reacting to something rather than initiating. For example, you're on the freeway and the car ahead suddenly stops. You're going to react and take evasive action well ahead of 7 seconds - and decide what evasive action to take: brake only, brake and steer clear, steer clear only, or duck and cover, or hand your passenger your beer and say "watch this!"

Now in a situation like that there's plausible room to say that the reaction was not consciously directed, that the subconscious was doing all the work. When we react in a hurry we sometimes can't even remember why we reacted the way we did. An acquaintance of mine recounted an episode from WWII where a crewman escaping a crashed airplane got out through a small access panel that afterward he could not get through no matter how hard he tried, and he had no recall of how he'd gotten out through it the first time.

So it's not clear we have free will in emergencies.

But what flaws are in the protocol of the 2008 study? I couldn't find any reference to any - but I did decide to not spend a lot of time looking.

Q's response included "To get saved" which presumably means not having the post-death soul consigned to hell, but in the preceding posts I've fully explained why I think anyone of sane mind should not give serious credence to the religious concept of hell, so here I'll focus on the first clause of Q's last point:

(30-07-2015 10:19 AM)The Q Continuum Wrote: ... C. I pray to go to the right doctor, if that makes sense. God NEVER asks us to abandon reason or hope. Those two, reason and hope, are meant to unify and harmonize ...

It's that praying to go to the right doctor that really bothers me. In the context of what prayer is, a request that a supernatural force alter a natural course of events to provide the outcome desired by the supplicant, a prayer to merely get sent to the right doctor is trite, selfish, and narrow.

Why not pray that whomever treats you while in the clinic, from nurse to NP to MD, does so competently and correctly? That way you're not leaving an incompetent practitioner still out there for someone else to fall into the hands of, by only praying that you get sent to a good MD.

For that matter, since you're petitioning a powerful supernatural force to make adjustments, why not be more efficient and pray that you simply be healed without needing to go to the less than perfect medical practice? If you're going to ask for an adjustment, ask for an adjustment. Why limit the scope of it? Do you think your god only able to make very tiny adjustments, pushing you toward door B instead of door A rather than the more direct and practical action of just fixing what's wrong?

Yet again, however, all of these prayers are narrowly selfish, asking for beneficial action for the petitioner alone. The scope of a prayer it seems to me should be larger than the petty ego that makes the request: Instead of asking to be sent to the right doctor, ask instead that the whole of humanity be given immunity to the ailment, in so doing demonstrating that your concern is not just for you alone but for the full society of mankind. Do you refrain from asking for such things because you think your god incapable?

If you genuinely believe your god heeds you when you pray, why ask for things of no consequence? Ask for great things: an end to all worldly suffering, global literacy, that the human mind be made immune to bigotry. At the very least, include more than just yourself when asking for something. Give your request some thought before voicing it and find ways to enlarge its scope to something actually useful.

There are many things about prayer that I consider detrimental, but when it gets used for petty requests that do nothing for anybody but the petitioner, and even then only for short term outcomes, I consider that the most despicable thing about it.

The article doesn't note any protocol problems and this study in fact corrects a protocol problem with an earlier similar study.

Nonetheless, the time interval of prediction was huge: 7 to 10 seconds, and it raises the question of what goes on when the brain is reacting to something rather than initiating. For example, you're on the freeway and the car ahead suddenly stops. You're going to react and take evasive action well ahead of 7 seconds - and decide what evasive action to take: brake only, brake and steer clear, steer clear only, or duck and cover, or hand your passenger your beer and say "watch this!"

Now in a situation like that there's plausible room to say that the reaction was not consciously directed, that the subconscious was doing all the work. When we react in a hurry we sometimes can't even remember why we reacted the way we did. An acquaintance of mine recounted an episode from WWII where a crewman escaping a crashed airplane got out through a small access panel that afterward he could not get through no matter how hard he tried, and he had no recall of how he'd gotten out through it the first time.

So it's not clear we have free will in emergencies.

But what flaws are in the protocol of the 2008 study? I couldn't find any reference to any - but I did decide to not spend a lot of time looking.

The study required participants to press a button when they felt an urge to press the button. Deciding to press a button because you feel like it is quite a bit different decision than say deciding to break up with with a really hot....I mean so hot she will make your teeth sweat girl but who is also a bat shit crazy ding danged physcho woman.....you know the type. Those two decision....they're really not even in the same category. One is deciding on an urge or whim, and the other requires your interior monologue to talk itself through all the pros and cons and make a judgment on what is optimal. One is a meaningful decision and the other is meaningless.

The study tells us what we already know, that the decision making process starts in the unconscious. On a meaningless made on a whim decision, that is really as far as the decison making process needs to go. Its not surprising that looking at brain states is going to be allow you make a prediction that is right 60% of the time. But what about hard meaningful decisions that take days to reach. Could a brain scan predict those?

(03-08-2015 03:03 AM)Heywood Jahblome Wrote: The study required participants to press a button when they felt an urge to press the button. Deciding to press a button because you feel like it is quite a bit different decision than say deciding to break up with with a really hot....I mean so hot she will make your teeth sweat girl but who is also a bat shit crazy ding danged physcho woman.....you know the type. Those two decision....they're really not even in the same category. One is deciding on an urge or whim, and the other requires your interior monologue to talk itself through all the pros and cons and make a judgment on what is optimal. One is a meaningful decision and the other is meaningless.

The study tells us what we already know, that the decision making process starts in the unconscious. On a meaningless made on a whim decision, that is really as far as the decison making process needs to go. Its not surprising that looking at brain states is going to be allow you make a prediction that is right 60% of the time. But what about hard meaningful decisions that take days to reach. Could a brain scan predict those?

Don't try to Neuro-science dumbshit. "Felt an urge" ? Really ? You wouldn't be trying to devalue or marginalize anything here would you ?
Define the difference, scientifically between an "urge" acted upon (a *decision*) and something else. Oh you can't ? Shocking.
The study doesn't show what you claimed. The study showed the decision was made before it was present in consciousness. Your lame attempt, without definitions and criteria to separate a complex decision from a simple one isn't going to fly. A complex decision is a 'subconscious war' between armies of all kinds of *factions*, NONE of which are totally present EVER in consciousness. That means we can toss any sort of concept of "religious free will" out the window. Moral Theology requires *full knowledge* etc etc.

So blowjob, you get an "F" today
1. in science
2. in religion

Oh well,

Insufferable know-it-all. It is objectively immoral to kill innocent babies. Please stick to the guilty babies.